Ceroid ford had the misfortune to be president in the period right after
Watergate when Congress, which was run by the opposition party, sought
to control the policy agenda. At the same time, economic stringency made
the creation of major new domestic programs difficult. Nineteen seventyfour, as it turned out, became an important dividing line between the expansive domestic policy of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program and
the much more limited domestic policy of the seventies. The congressional
elections of that same year, conducted less than three months after Ford
took office, resulted not only in a Democratic landslide but also in increased momentum for efforts to reform Congress. Intended as a means of
opening up the legislative process so that Congress could more easily act on
the people's will, the reforms actually made it more difficult for Congress
to pass major legislation.

HEALTH INSURANCE

The battle over national health insurance illustrated how the differences
between the Great Society and the seventies affected Gerald Ford. This issue
had been a contentious one, almost from the time that it arose during the
New Deal. Reformers thought that the government should bring health
care within people's financial reach by starting a national program of public health insurance. Members of the medical profession worried that the
federal government's entrance into the field would undermine their professional autonomy and lower the quality of care. The results were a stalemate

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